The Sun Burned Bright and Hot is not only the title of my book, but also the title of the first poem you will read. The poem has two main characters: (1) The Chumash Indian sun god Kaqunupenawa and (2) the island, Queen Anacapa. This is the story of the sun god’s quest to find and make love to the island’s Queen.
After many years of searching, the sun god and his crew come upon the island. The sacred union of Kaqunupenawa and Queen Anacapa in the last stanza consecrates the city of Ventura and celebrates the creative power of sexual love. Not only do the queen and the sun god mate, but also the queen’s slave girls and the sun god’s crewmen making the couples into a sacred people.
The poem is meant to evoke the spirit of The Iliad and The Odyssey. I tried to do for the Channel Islands what Homer did for the Greek Islands namely, to create a mythology about the natural world that beckons us with its scenic beauty. The main poetic device I use is personification, breathing human characteristics into sun, sea, land and sky.
About thirty years ago, I fell in love with the Channel Islands off the coastal city of Ventura, California. One of the islands in particular caught my fancy: Anacapa. The word means mirage or ever changing. It comes from the language of the Chumash Indians who inhabited the Channel Islands for thousands of years before the Spanish settlers arrived on the California coast.
On the cover you see four images: sun, ocean, island and sky. They represent the four archetypal forces of primitive man. (1) the sun symbolizes light and heat, the purging disinfectant power of brilliance. It is the unblinking awareness of the conscious mind. (2) the ocean symbolizes the deep unconscious, and the all consuming power of chaos. It also stands for cleansing and vastness.
